Monday, August 25, 2008

Does anyone have a good estimate of losses recognised to date?

In this post I talked about the Bloomberg list of losses recognised to date. I even gave a spreadsheet here.

The problem with the Bloomberg list is that it doesn't include lots of entities that have booked losses. It excludes for instance insurance companies (AIG does not appear and they are almost exhibit A in big companies gone mad). It also excludes GSEs, mortgage insurers, bond insurers, hedge funds that have lost money and the like. It does not include Residential Finanial Corp (GMAC), or any of the imploded subprime issuers.

Even then recognised losses come in above 500 billion.

Does anyone have a complete list?

Even better - does anyone have a complete list with spreadsheets speculating on obvious problems of double-counting. For instance if someone is mark-to-market on a bond insured by MBIA then they are probably showing a loss. MBIA is showing losses. There is of necessity some double-counting here. [Such an adjustment will be rough...]

Hoping for help.

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The reason is that I want to work out how far down this credit crisis really is. The Bloomberg list is misleading for that task.

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